Three Separate, Equal and Dysfunctional Branches of Government

WASHINGTON — The continuing breakdown in Washington’s ability to govern seemed to spread like a contagion Thursday through all three branches of government.

The dysfunction somehow managed to reach new levels. The Supreme Court, left short-handed by a Republican refusal to act on President Obama’s nominee in the final year of his presidency, deadlocked on a major immigration case. The inaction validated a lower court finding against the administration’s attempt to allow millions of unauthorized immigrants to live legally in the United States.

Mr. Obama, who sought to address the nation’s immigration crisis through his executive powers because of a persistent impasse on Capitol Hill, was unable to achieve one of his major goals — which pleased Republicans but left the president angry and disappointed.

Democrats ended a raucous 25-hour protest on the House floor, failing to gain a vote on gun safety issues but exulting in the attention they received via a breakout social media campaign that threw the House rule book out the Capitol’s neoclassical windows. Republican leaders accused Democrats of trying to capitalize on the Orlando, Fla., shooting while destroying the decorum of the House.

The decision by Democrats to act out in the House was just the latest attempt to upend the political status quo in a year distinguished by political disruption, from Donald J. Trump rattling the Republican establishment to Senator Bernie Sanders — the democratic socialist who made an appearance at the House protest — drawing huge crowds of young voters with calls to radically change the way Americans think about government.

Partisan turmoil is nothing new in Washington. But the cloistered Supreme Court now finds itself disrupted as well by its empty seat, unable to fully function because of a Senate unwilling to act.

In what passes in today’s capital for a breakthrough, eight Senate Republicans joined Democrats in giving majority support to a bipartisan compromise to prevent terrorism suspects from buying firearms. But that plan, engineered by Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, can go nowhere until she rounds up significantly more Republican support.

Tempers were short and patience waned after a long night of confrontation on the House floor occupied by Democrats to the outrage of Republicans, who forced an adjournment vote shortly before 3 a.m. Thursday.

“This is the people’s House, this is Congress, the House of Representatives, the oldest democracy in the world and they’re descending it into chaos,” Speaker Paul D. Ryan told reporters Thursday as the protest was winding up. “This isn’t a proud moment for democracy or for the people who staged these stunts.”

As part of that final vote, House Republicans approved and sent to the Senate a bill to address the Zika health threat months after the White House sought the money. But the package, assembled with little Democratic participation, contained elements they knew Senate Democrats would oppose. The calculation appeared to be that if Democrats now block it, they will the ones blamed rather than Republicans.

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Representatives David Jolly, Gwen Graham and Seth Moulton watching from the House steps as a crowd formed after midnight.CreditAl Drago/The New York Times

Democrats saw that as just another provocation.

“What you are seeing happening is a level of frustration that is just boiling over,” said Representative Joseph Crowley of New York, one of the ringleaders of the Democratic floor revolt.

For the duration of the sit-in, the House chamber, where electronic devices and photographs are frowned on, was awash in selfies, Facebook Live and Periscope. Even normally staid C-Span engaged in guerrilla video warfare, streaming a feed from a House member’s phone on its House channel, showing the action as seen from the floor instead of the usual camera angles from the gallery above.

House Democrats joyfully flouted House rules. Republicans said that some of their members urged the leadership to employ a cell-signal-jamming device to cut off the coverage, but that was deemed a bad idea.

Mr. Ryan and other Republicans suggested there could be repercussions in the form of ethics complaints or other actions against Democrats.

“We’re reviewing everything,” he said. “We are reviewing everything right now, as to what happened and how to make sure that we can bring order to this chaos.”

What the payoff will be for that chaos orchestrated by House Democrats remains unclear. They were already expected to gain seats in the November election but a takeover is still considered a long shot, even with Mr. Trump as the Republican nominee. And Mr. Ryan showed that he could still command the majority-really-rules House even during the protest.

Still, the defiance by House Democrats, who angrily declined to head out of town without so much as a vote on gun control after the killings in Orlando proved that they were willing to fight. They had seen their brethren in the Senate, who have much more legislative leverage, force a vote on gun proposals and did not want to be pushed aside by the House majority.

But the inability of the Supreme Court to issue a decision, the Senate stalemate on guns, the dispute over Zika and the disorder on the House floor as lawmakers almost came to blows in an American version of foreign legislators duking it out could just turn people off Washington even more — if that is possible.

With dawn just a few hours off, Mr. Ryan jammed through the Zika spending bill and his motion to adjourn to allow Republicans to leave town without even so much as the briefest of debates.

“So we’re locked out of everything, if I am understanding the rule correctly?” Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, a Democrat who is considered an expert on House rules, asked of Mr. Ryan. “This is a lousy process, Mr. Speaker.”

The House, as they say on Capitol Hill, was not in order, and the rest of the government was struggling as well.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: 3 Separate, Equal and Dysfunctional Branches. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe